Saturday, January 11, 2014

Book Review: The Expats


I've been wanting to read this book for a really long time and I finally got around to listening to the audiobook, which I downloaded from Audible. I certainly enjoyed it and it was worth the wait. This novel is a stylish spy thriller about a regular American family living abroad in Luxembourg. Okay, scratch regular. This American couple is far from regular even though outward appearances would make you think they are. One worked for the government in the past and the other... hmm... we're really not sure what his deal is. Apparently, he works for a bank doing IT work involving security.

Or does he?

While listening to this book, I really felt like I could trust no one. Everyone is suspicious and all the characters have their own personal agenda which makes them suspect, though most of them are actually pretty likable. No one really is a bad guy

I enjoyed reading about life in Europe for an American couple. What it's like to be an expat. This book was really interesting and the author keeps the reader guessing about what's going on. My only complaint is that I don't like how the book jumped around with timeframes. One minute it's 10 years ago, next it's 2 months ago, then it may be present day. Maybe while reading the physical copy of the book it wouldn't be so confusing, but on the audiobook I kept losing track of the setting.

At times the story also seemed almost a bit sloppy, like the author had all these ideas, but he didn't really think them out so well. It just seemed like he had many things he wanted to include, but didn't quite know how to execute them. It wasn't that big of a deal, where it ruined the reading experience, but it was enough that it was at least obvious.

I am giving The Expats 4 out of 5 stars.

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